________________
51
unknown to the Bardic' group. is defined (Sc. IV 29, Ch. 37a/15, KD. II 21) as 6+4+4+2 and when it has as it is called erfeer or after. No specific prescription is found for the form of the final two-moraie , but the practice is mostly in favour of two shorts. Now apart from the two above-mentioned stanzas 104 and 182 which satisfy all the requirements of an arfer, there are 22 other stanzas (157 to 170; 174 to 181) in the SR. whose structure is doubtlessly that of an arfer, but which fail to satisfy the important condition that all the lines should have the यमक. It does not seem justified to call the metre of these stanzas because, as noted above, that name is quite unknown to the "Bardic" tradition, while the metres of the SR. have no particular concern with the "Classical" tradition.
GRAMMAR
On the strength of some evidence, the fact can be historically explained. There is an ancient tradition (See VJs. IV 32, CK. 41) to the effect that in a stanza made up of equal or unequal lines of any good metre, if the art (i. e. i) language and the are employed, the stanza is called af. VJs. IV 34 gives an illustration of “ अडिला नक्कडय भेएण" i e an अडिल्ला in the form of a नर्कुटक stanza in आभीरी with the यमक employed in it. But just below the above-cited definition of the fear, another one is given at Vлs. IV 33. Unfortunetely the text of this definition stanza is not quite clear, but the form of the stanza is 6+~-~+~~+~~, with one 4 for all the four lines. These facts make it probable that formerly fee was a technical device rather than the name of any specific metre and accordingly any common metre could be turned into afer by composing it in अपभ्रंश and using the यमक. But the metre with the form 6+4+ 4+ was employed with special preference for this purpose and the result was, afer ceased to be a general name and came to be specially attached to that particular metre. And later on, the distinction between the ('a recurring group of syllables identical in sounds but different in sense') and the ('rhyme') being lost (cf. the uses of the term in the sense of age in the CK. and even in the Sc.; see also the illustration stanza for arfer at PP. 128), a 16-moraic metre of the above type, even without the 4 came to be called fer. Finally it also took up the rhyme a b, c d.
1
It is to be noted that the term 3 appears to have an exactly parallel history. See Ck. 31, 38; comm. on Pr. 148; Ch. 438/15-19.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
